right where they’d stuck. A merciless slaughter. Tracing the route, Ivanr saw it all in his mind’s eye: the swooping charge, the sudden lurching massing, the milling confusion. Then from the woods archers emerging to fire at will. And this boggy lowland; Sister Gosh’s skystones abetted by his own blood?
A horse nickered nearby; he turned to see Martal herself coming, followed by a coterie of officers and aides. She stopped her mount next to him. Kicked-up mud dotted her black armour. She drew off her helmet, leaned forward on the pommel of the saddle and peered down at him. He thought she looked pale, her eyes bruised and puffy with exhaustion, her hair matted with sweat.
‘Congratulations,’ he ground out, his voice a croak.
Her gaze flicked to the killing-fields. ‘You disapprove.’
‘They were trapped, helpless. You murdered them all without mercy.’ He eyed her: ‘You’re proud of it?’
The woman visibly controlled herself — bit down a curt retort. ‘This is no duel in some fencing school, Ivanr. This is war. They were prepared to cut down all of us — you included.’
‘Enough died there. We had no support!’
‘It had to be convincing. They had to have control of the field.’
He shook his head, appalled by the chances she’d taken. ‘An awful gamble.’
‘Every battle is.’
Shaking his head he felt hot tears rush to his eyes and wiped them away. ‘I know. That’s why I swore off it all.’ He laughed. ‘Imagine that, yes? Ridiculous.’
Martal cleared her throat, drew off one gauntlet to rub her own sweaty face. ‘Ivanr…’
‘Yes?’
‘Beneth is dead.’
He stared. ‘What? When?’
‘During the battle.’
He turned to the forces coming together on the field, troopers embracing, cheering, and he felt desolate. ‘This will break them.’
‘No it will not,’ Martal forced through clenched teeth.
He eyed her, unsure. ‘You can’t hope to withhold it…’
Her lips tightened once more against an angry response. ‘I wouldn’t do something like that. And besides, word has already gotten out. No, it won’t break them because they have you.’
He regarded her warily. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean his last wish — his last command to me. That you take his place.’
‘Me? That’s ridiculous.’ It seemed to him that Martal privately agreed with the evaluation. He considered her words: ‘his last command to me’. She’s only doing this because of her extraordinary faith in and devotion to that man.
And what of him? Had he no faith in anything? Anyone?
He examined his hands: bloodied, torn and blistered. He squeezed them together. ‘Well, perhaps I shouldn’t be in the lines now anyway… rather awkward place for someone who’s sworn a vow against killing.’
The foreign woman peered down at him with something new in her gaze. ‘Yes. About that… a rare thing to have done. Beneth did not mention it, but did you know that some fifty years ago he swore the same vow?’
Ivanr could only stare, struck speechless. Martal pulled her helmet back on, twisted a fist in her reins. ‘No matter. You have me to spill the blood. The Black Queen will be the murderess, the scourge.’
He watched her ride off and he wondered: had he also heard in her tone… the scapegoat? A mystery there, for certain, that feyness. It occurred to him that perhaps she was no more relishing her role than he. And just what is my role? What was it Beneth did? I’ve no idea at all. All the foreign gods… I have to find Sister Gosh.
The Shadow priest, Warran, led Kiska and Jheval across the dune field out on to a kind of flat desert of shattered black rocks over hardpan. The lightning-lanced storm of the Whorl coursed ahead, seemingly so close Kiska thought she could reach out and touch it.
The two great ravens kept with them. They coursed high overhead, occasionally stooping over the priest, cawing their mocking calls. Warran ignored them, or tried his best to, back taut, shoulders high and tight as if he could wish the birds away.
After a time Jheval finally let out an impatient breath and gestured ahead. ‘All right, priest. There it is. You’ve guided us to a horizon-to-horizon front that we could hardly have missed. You’ve done your job. Now you can go.’
The priest squinted as if seeing the mountain-tall front for the first time. ‘I think I will come along,’ he said.
‘Come along?’ Jheval motioned for Kiska to say something.
‘You don’t have to,’ she offered.
Warran gave a deprecating wave. ‘Oh, it’s quite all right. I want to.’
‘You do?’
‘Oh yes. I’m curious.’
Jheval sent Kiska a this-is-all-your-fault glare.
‘Curious?’ she asked.
‘Oh yes.’ He stroked his unshaven cheeks, his beady eyes narrowed. ‘For one thing — where did all the fish go?’
Jheval made a move as if to cuff the fellow. Kiska glared at the Seven Cities native. ‘I think,’ she said, slowly and gently, ‘they’re probably all dead.’
Warran examined Kiska closely as if gauging her intelligence. ‘Of course they are, you crazy woman! What does that have to do with anything?’
Kiska fell back next to Jheval. They shared a look; Kiska irritated and Jheval knowing.
Curl by curl, mounting clouds over clouds, the Whorl rose higher in the dull sky of the Warren until it was as if it were leaning over them. The closer they came the more it resembled the front of a churning sandstorm, though seeming immobile. It cut across the landscape as a curtain of hissing, shimmering dust and dirt.
‘Can we cross it?’ Kiska yelled, having to raise her voice to be heard over the waterfall-roar.
‘How should I know?’ the priest answered, annoyed.
The ravens swooped past them then to land to one side where something pale lay half buried in the sands. They pecked at it, scavenging, and Kiska charged. Waving her arms, yelling, she drove them from their perches atop what appeared to be the body of a huge hound.
Jheval ran up, morningstars in his fists. ‘Careful!’
Kiska knelt next to the beast, stroked its head; it was alive, and pale, as white as snow beneath the dirt and dust.
‘A white hound,’ Jheval mused. ‘I’ve never heard of the like.’ He beckoned the priest to them but the man refused to come any closer. He stood alone, hunched and bedraggled, looking like the survivor of a shipwreck. The hound was panting, mouth agape, lips pulled back from black gums, its fearsome finger-long teeth exposed. ‘Is it wounded?’
Kiska was running her hands down its sides. ‘I don’t see any wound. Perhaps it is exhausted.’
‘Well, there’s nothing we can do.’
‘No.’ She stroked its head. ‘I suppose not. A handsome beast.’
Jheval snorted. ‘Deadly.’
The thing in the bag at Kiska’s side was squirming now, as though impatient. She rose. ‘We should pass through.’
Jheval gestured helplessly to the storm. ‘And what is on the other side? Is anything? We’ll be lost in this front, just like at home.’
Kiska freed the cloth from her helmet, wrapped it round her face. ‘There must be something. The hound came from there.’
‘Yes, fleeing!’
A shrug was all she would give to such an unknown.
Glaring his irritation, Jheval undid his sash — it proved to be a very long rope of woven red silk. He offered an end to Kiska and she tied it to her belt, asking, ‘What of the priest?’
